News & Views

ICANN today published three reports on the review of the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) process. The CPE Process Review was initiated at the request of the ICANN Board as part of the Board's due diligence in the administration of the CPE process. The reports can be found at the link below.

CPE Process Review

The CPE Process Review was initiated at the request of the ICANN Board as part of the Board's due diligence in the administration of the CPE process. The CPE Process Review was conducted by FTI Consulting Inc.'s (FTI) Global Risk and Investigations Practice (GRIP) and Technology Practice, and consisted of three parts: (i) reviewing the process by which ICANN organization interacted with the CPE Provider related to the CPE reports issued by the CPE Provider (Scope 1); (ii) an evaluation of whether the CPE criteria were applied consistently throughout each CPE report (Scope 2); and (iii) a compilation of the reference material relied upon by the CPE Provider to the extent such reference material exists for the eight evaluations which are the subject of pending Reconsideration Requests that were pending at the time that ICANN initiated the CPE Process Review (Scope 3).

The corresponding reports for each of the Scopes described above can be found below:

Understanding CPE

Overview

Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) is a method to resolve string contention, described in full detail in section 4.2 of the Applicant Guidebook (AGB). It will only occur if a community application is both in contention and elects to pursue CPE. The evaluation itself is an independent analysis conducted by a panel from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU was selected for this role because it offers premier business intelligence services, providing political, economic, and public policy analysis to businesses, governments, and organizations across the globe.

As part of its process, the EIU reviews and scores a community applicant that has elected CPE against the following four criteria: Community Establishment; Nexus between Proposed String and Community; Registration Policies, and Community Endorsement. An application must score at least 14 points to prevail in a community priority evaluation, a high bar because awarding priority eliminates all non-community applicants in the contention set as well as any other non-prevailing community applicants. For details regarding the EIU's work with ICANN as well as its evaluation process, please see the resources below:

CPE Eligibility

Fulfillment of the CPE Eligibility criteria explained below permits an applicant to begin the CPE process and ensures that applications as well as contention sets are in stable, viable states, i.e., are not at risk of an open matter affecting whether they will proceed.

Eligibility Requirements for Standard CPE Invitation

Once an application is eligible for CPE, it will be invited to CPE and have up to 21 days to accept the invitation and pay the CPE fees. The invitations will be posted to this page in the CPE Status section. The evaluation will begin no sooner than 14 days after the invitation to allow for final submission of application comments and correspondence to ICANN regarding the application.

To be eligible to begin Standard CPE Processing, an application must:

be a self-designated Community Application per section 1.2.3 of the AGB

have an application status of "Active"

be in an unresolved contention set (contention set status is either "Active" or "On-Hold" and at least one other application in the set has a status of either "Active or On-Hold"

not have a pending change request

not be in an active comment window for a recently approved changed request

Additionally, as per section 4.2 of the AGB, all remaining members of the contention set must have completed all previous stages of the process. All remaining applications in the contention set must:

have completed evaluation

have no pending objections

have addressed all applicable GAC Advice

not be classified in the "High Risk" category of the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework

Eligibility Requirements for Accelerated Invitation to CPE

Once a community application has met the requirements listed below, ICANN will notify them of the option to request an Accelerated Invitation to CPE. An applicant is able to request an Accelerated Invitation to CPE when outstanding eligibility criteria do not have the potential to impact the community applicant's membership in a contention set and/or when the contention set as a whole may not have met all eligibility requirements for the standard CPE Invitation process.

After an Applicant has requested the Accelerated Invitation, the standard CPE Invitation process will commence, including posting on this web page.

To be eligible for an Accelerated Invitation to CPE, an application must:

be a self-designated Community Application per section 1.2.3 of the AGB

have a status of "Active" or "On-Hold"

be in an unresolved contention set (contention set status is either "Active" or "On-Hold" and at least one other application in the set has a status of either "Active or On-Hold")

not have a pending change request

not be in an active application comment window for an approved changed request

have addressed all applicable GAC Advice

Additionally, as per section 4.2 of the AGB, all remaining members of the contention set must have completed all previous stages of the process. All remaining applications in the contention set must:

have completed evaluation

have no pending objections

not be classified in the "High Risk" category of the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework

CPE Resources

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Process documentation for Community Priority Evaluation is posted for informational purposes to provide transparency of the panel's evaluation process. On 14 March 2016, in an effort to provide greater transparency on the CPE process, the Panel submitted correspondence [PDF, 52 KB] with additional information regarding the process for verifying letters of support and opposition.

ICANN has published the CPE Guidelines produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit after considering ICANN community feedback on the first draft. The Guidelines are an accompanying document to the AGB, and are meant to provide additional clarity around the scoring principles outlined in the AGB. The Guidelines are intended to increase transparency, fairness and consistency in the evaluation process.

The timeline has been updated to reflect changes made in the FAQ revision from 13 Aug 2014.

CPE Status

ICANN began inviting eligible applicants to elect the CPE process on 9 October 2013. The invitation date and evaluation results are represented in the table below. Important: application comments and letters of support or opposition must be submitted within 14 days of the CPE Invitation Date in order to be considered by the CPE Panel. Access the Application Comments page.

As a follow-up to the update provided on 2 June 2017 [PDF, 405 KB], ICANN has published a subsequent update regarding the review of the CPE process. Please find the links to the announcement and update below.

As a follow-up to the update provided by Chris Disspain on 26 April 2017 [PDF, 405 KB], ICANN has published a subsequent update regarding the review of the CPE process. Please find the links to the announcement and update below.

ICANN has made minor revisions to the CPE eligibility criteria for both a standard invitation and an accelerated invitation to align with recent changes put forth in the "Update on Application Status and Contention Sets" Advisory. These revisions reflect the current definitions of "active" and "on-hold" for both applications and contention sets. For more details, please see the updated eligibility criteria below. The corresponding questions and answers on the FAQ page [PDF, 377 KB] have also been updated, and the timeline has also been updated to reflect changes made in the last FAQ revision.

13 August 2014 – CPE Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Updated

ICANN has updated the CPE FAQs. The update includes revisions to existing answers based on lessons learned over the past nine months of CPE operations as well as the addition of answers to questions regarding Accelerated Invitation to CPE.

28 May 2014 – Accelerated Invitation to Elect CPE

In effort to maintain program momentum, ICANN has enhanced the CPE invitation process to allow for community applicants to begin the CPE process earlier. The new process provides the community applicant the ability to Opt-In to a CPE invite sooner than the standard Eligibility Criteria. If they qualify, the community applicant can request an invitation to elect CPE. This would allow them to initiate the CPE process sooner than current requirements allow. Select the following link for more information about the process

25 October 2013 – Additional Community Priority Evaluation Resources Available

09 October 2013 – CPE Invitations Sent to Eligible Applicants

Find out which applicants have been invited and where their applications are in the process. This information will be updated regularly as invitations are sent and evaluations are performed and completed.

27 September 2013 – Final Community Priority Evaluation Guidelines Published

The Economist Intelligence Unit finalized its CPE Guidelines after considering ICANN community feedback. The Guidelines have been made public to ensure quality, consistency and transparency in the evaluation process.

09 September 2013 – Feedback on Draft CPE Guidelines

16 August 2013 – CPE Draft Guidelines & Community Review

EIU, the CPE panel firm, develops a set of guidelines based on the criteria in the Applicant Guidebook to be used in the evaluation process. Applicants and community members are invited to provide feedback.

14 June 2013 – Community Priority Evaluation Early Election

CPE Resources Archive

Draft CPE Guidelines [PDF, 803 KB] (Published 16 August 2013)
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the firm selected to manage Community Priority Evaluation, published a set of draft Guidelines that panelists will use to score Community applicants. Before finalizing, applicants and the community were invited to review and provide feedback.

Community Feedback on Draft CPE Guidelines is available for review below: